Iranian Art Series Winter 2026: Moujan Matin

Crafting Kashan: Ceramics, Colour, and Commerce from the Pre-Mongol to Ilkhanid Periods

The Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Institute of Iranian Studies presents a Iranian Art Series lecture on Tuesday, February 10, 2026, at 2 pm (Eastern Time: Canada and US).

Kashan - the name recurs, almost inevitably, whenever one speaks of Persian ceramics from the pre-Mongol and Ilkhanid centuries. It appears on museum labels, in catalogues, in the margins of books - often followed by a cautious question mark. Known as the foremost, perhaps the only, centre for the production of lustrewares, mina'i, and lajvardina ceramics, Kashan has long been studied through the lens of art history. Yet even that view is clouded: the art market has scattered these objects and stripped many of their provenance. This talk turns away from connoisseurship and towards production - the materials, processes, kilns, and the hands that shaped and glazed. Drawing on archaeological scientific analyses, medieval Persian technical treatises, and archaeological evidence, it seeks to reconstruct how these ceramics were produced. Alongside this, it looks to another craft rooted in the same landscape: the mining and refining of cobalt at Qamsar, near Kashan - the source of the blue used in the ceramic glazes of the Islamic world, and carried further east into the porcelains of the Yuan and early Ming dynasties. Together, these industries - ceramics and minerals - reveal Kashan not only as a site of manufacture, but as a point of convergence in the material history of the medieval world.

Moujan Matin (DPhil, University of Oxford) is an archaeological scientist specializing in the history and production of glazed ceramics and pigments, primarily from West Asia. Her research explores objects through the lens of craftspeople, production techniques, and materials. She is co-author of Glazed Ceramics of the Islamic World 700-1600 CE (Cambridge University Press, 2025), which brings together scientific studies of West Asian ceramics for archaeological scientists, art historians, and archaeologists. She is currently Laboratory Director at the University of Western Ontario, Canada.

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